Multiple Scalp Lesions in a Patient with Keratitis, Ichthyosis and Deafness Syndrome Mimicking Metastatic Squamous Cell Carcinoma on 18F-FDG PET/CT.

We report the case of a 17-year-old girl with keratitis, ichthyosis, and deafness (KID) syndrome. As a complication of her KID syndrome she developed squamous cell carcinoma at the left index finger. Additional clinical features were multiple soft tissue lesions over the scalp mimicking metastatic disease on 18F-FDG PET/CT. To our knowledge, this is the first case report about the uptake pattern of KID syndrome associated skin lesions on whole body PET/CT with 18F-FDG

Modeling the Influence of Recent Experience on Judgements

Individuals are often called upon to make sequences of judgments, as is required in questionnaires, reviewing movies, or taste testing beverages. The value in these judgments is bounded by how well individuals can express their internal sensations, impressions, and evaluations using rating scales. Psychological studies have shown that individuals are incapable of making judgments on an absolute rating scale, and instead rely upon reference points and anchors from recent experiences [32]. These sequential dependencies prevent acquisition of useful responses in judgment tasks. Luckily, the cognitive process of transforming internal sensations to responses relies in a lawful manner on recent experiences [5]. We first examined whether this contamination from recent experience is due to the short lag between responses, often a second or two apart. Indeed, researchers sometimes increase the time between judgments specifically to avoid sequential dependencies. We examined a data set collected with trials one minute apart. The data consists of pain calibrations acquired from experiments for Professor Tor Wager\u27s lab at Columbia University. Wager studies brain activity associated with pain and placebo effects. Participants were asked to judge the level of pain induced by varying temperature in pools of water. The calibration procedure attempts to determine the mapping between temperature in degrees Celsius, and the pain rating on a 10 point scale. We first generated figures that related groups of temperature data to analyze whether sequential dependencies played a role in this data set. We discovered, even though the calibrations were designed to avoid sequential dependencies, that these effects existed. We then created models to help predict these effects, including linear regression models, neural nets, and lookup tables. We found that we could reduce the root mean squared error across the data set by 6%. Given the systematic contamination of a trial on subsequent trials, we next asked whether it would be possible to reverse this effect and decontaminate judgments to obtain a more reliable, context independent measure of an individual\u27s perception. We collected our own data for this task. We asked individuals to rate obscure movie advertisements (DVD boxes) by indicating on a 10 point scale how likely they would want to watch the movie. The same movies were rated multiple times in order to observe the effects of context. Half the data from each individual (2 presentations of 50 movies) was used for constructing decontamination models. The decontamination model consists of a context-independent \u27impression\u27 for each movie as well as a contamination model that predicts how a movie will be rated in a given context. Models were scored on how well the decontamination model predicted actual judgments. We found that we could reduce mean squared error across the data set by 5%

Short-Term Effects of Ketamine and Isoflurane on Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction in an Experimental Swine Model

Background. General anesthesia is an essential element of experimental medical procedures. Ketamine and isoflurane are agents commonly used to induce and maintain anesthesia in animals. The cardiovascular effects of these anesthetic agents are diverse, and the response of global myocardial function is unknown. Methods. In a series of 15 swine, echocardiography measurements of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) were obtained before the animals received anesthesia (baseline), after an intramuscular injection of ketamine (postketamine) and after inhaled isoflurane (postisoflurane). Results. The mean LVEF of an unanesthetized swine was 47 ± 3%. There was a significant decrease in the mean LVEF after administration of ketamine to 41 + 6.5% (P = 0.003). The addition of inhaled isoflurane did not result in further decrease in mean LVEF (mean LVEF 38 ± 7.2%, P = 0.22). Eight of the swine had an increase in their LVEF with sympathetic stimulation. Conclusions. In our experimental model the administration of ketamine was associated with decreased LV function. The decrease may be largely secondary to a blunting of sympathetic tone. The addition of isoflurane to ketamine did not significantly change LV function. A significant number of animals had returned to preanesthesia LV function with sympathetic stimulation

Multilingual Part-of-Speech Tagging: Two Unsupervised Approaches

We demonstrate the effectiveness of multilingual learning for unsupervised part-of-speech tagging. The central assumption of our work is that by combining cues from multiple languages, the structure of each becomes more apparent. We consider two ways of applying this intuition to the problem of unsupervised part-of-speech tagging: a model that directly merges tag structures for a pair of languages into a single sequence and a second model which instead incorporates multilingual context using latent variables. Both approaches are formulated as hierarchical Bayesian models, using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling techniques for inference. Our results demonstrate that by incorporating multilingual evidence we can achieve impressive performance gains across a range of scenarios. We also found that performance improves steadily as the number of available languages increases

Use of IU parallel computing resources and high performance file systems - July 2013 to Dec 2014

This report details use of IU's parallel computing resources and high performance file systems from July 2013 through December 2014

The Number of Endothelial Progenitor Cell Colonies in the Blood Is Increased in Patients With Angiographically Significant Coronary Artery Disease

ObjectivesThe objective of this study was to determine whether the number of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and circulating angiogenic cells (CACs) in peripheral blood was associated with the presence and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients undergoing coronary angiography.BackgroundPrevious studies have suggested an inverse relationship between levels of circulating EPCs/CACs and the presence of CAD or cardiovascular risk factors, whereas other studies have observed increased numbers of EPCs in the setting of acute ischemia. However, the criteria used to identify specific angiogenic cell subpopulations and methods of evaluating CAD varied in these studies. In the present study, we used rigorous criteria to identify EPCs and CACs in the blood of patients undergoing coronary angiography.MethodsThe number of EPCs and CACs were measured in the blood of 48 patients undergoing coronary angiography. Patients with acute coronary syndromes were excluded.ResultsCompared with patients without angiographically significant CAD, the number of EPCs was increased (1.11 ± 2.50 vs. 4.01 ± 3.70 colonies/well, p = 0.004) and the number of CACs trended higher (175 ± 137 vs. 250 ± 160 cells per mm2, p = 0.09) among patients with significant CAD. The highest levels of EPCs were isolated from patients subsequently selected for revascularization (5.03 ± 4.10 colonies/well).ConclusionsIn patients referred for coronary angiography, higher numbers of EPCs, and a trend toward higher numbers of CACs, were associated with the presence of significant CAD, and EPC number correlated with maximum angiographic stenosis severity. Endothelial progenitor cell levels were highest in patients with CAD selected for revascularization

A long‐term obesogenic high‐fat diet in mice partially dampens the anti‐frailty benefts of late‐life intermittent fasting

The global obesity pandemic coupled with ever-growing life expectancies equates to hundreds of millions of individuals with potentially longer but not healthier lives. Aging is one of the risk factors for numerous maladies such as metabolic dis- order and frailty, which are exacerbated under obesity. Thus, therapeutic approaches that address obesity to ultimately improve afected individuals’ quality of life and extend their lifespan are needed. We previously reported that the every other day (EOD) fasting initiated late-life improved metabolic, musculoskeletal, and cognitive endpoints in standard rodent diet-fed mice. In the present study, using the same dietary intervention methodology, we tested if 2.5 months of EOD fasting could improve metabolic, physiological, and cognitive endpoints in mice after an 18 month obesogenic high-fat diet (HFD). The positive efects of EOD fasting were generally consistent across the endpoints; EOD fasting decreased total body mass, maintained more %lean mass, improved glucose tol- erance and utilization, and improved neuromuscu- lar function. In contrast to our previous study, grip strength, hippocampal-dependent memory, and renal hydrogen sulfde (H2S) production were not improved by the HFD EOD fasting. Thus, efcacy for late- life initiated intermittent fasting to improve specifc frailty markers may be partially dependent on nutritional compositions of the diet

Anatomical adjustments of the tree hydraulic pathway decrease canopy conductance under long-term elevated CO2_2

The cause of reduced leaf-level transpiration under elevated CO$_2$ remains largely elusive. Here, we assessed stomatal, hydraulic, and morphological adjustments in a long-term experiment on Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) seedlings germinated and grown for 22–40 months under elevated (eCO$_2$; c. 860 ppm) or ambient (aCO$_2$; c. 410 ppm) CO$_2$. We assessed if eCO$_2$-triggered reductions in canopy conductance (g$_c$) alter the response to soil or atmospheric drought and are reversible or lasting due to anatomical adjustments by exposing eCO$_2$ seedlings to decreasing [CO$_2$]. To quantify underlying mechanisms, we analyzed leaf abscisic acid (ABA) level, stomatal and leaf morphology, xylem structure, hydraulic efficiency, and hydraulic safety. Effects of eCO$_2$ manifested in a strong reduction in leaf-level g$_c$ (−55%) not caused by ABA and not reversible under low CO$_2$ (c. 200 ppm). Stomatal development and size were unchanged, while stomatal density increased (+18%). An increased vein-to-epidermis distance (+65%) suggested a larger leaf resistance to water flow. This was supported by anatomical adjustments of branch xylem having smaller conduits (−8%) and lower conduit lumen fraction (−11%), which resulted in a lower specific conductivity (−19%) and leaf-specific conductivity (−34%). These adaptations to CO$_2$ did not change stomatal sensitivity to soil or atmospheric drought, consistent with similar xylem safety thresholds. In summary, we found reductions of g$_c$ under elevated CO$_2$ to be reflected in anatomical adjustments and decreases in hydraulic conductivity. As these water savings were largely annulled by increases in leaf biomass, we do not expect alleviation of drought stress in a high CO$_2$ atmosphere

Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century

This paper uses historical fluctuations in temperature within countries to identify its effects on aggregate economic outcomes. We find three primary results. First, higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries. Second, higher temperatures may reduce growth rates, not just the level of output. Third, higher temperatures have wide-ranging effects, reducing agricultural output, industrial output, and political stability. These findings inform debates over climate's role in economic development and suggest the possibility of substantial negative impacts of higher temperatures on poor countries